Phone For Music?

- Mark Fleischmann

YOU DON’T NEED US TO TELL you that smartphones have become ubiquitous in the United States. Seventy-two percent of Americans have one, surpassed only by South Koreans, Australians, and Israelis. At some point in the phone’s evolution—between the ungainly bricks of yesteryear and the sleek phablets of today—the miracle device took on the job of music playback, pushing dedicated music players toward irrelevance. Remember the iPod? Why carry two devices when you can get by with one?

High-end listeners have nevertheless hung onto their hi-res players, asserting that the digital-to-analog converters (DACs) and headphone amplifiers built into phones don’t deliver music— especially in hi-res formats—as cleanly and realistically as the components of dedicated players. LG now bids for those listeners’ attention with the V20 Android smartphone. It seems to have most of the usual phone trimmings—though, with full disclosure, we at Sound & Vision aren’t experts on that subject. But LG asserts that, as an added attraction, the V20 can deliver credible audiophile sonics “through wired headphones or speakers,” and the company has built in some uncommon componentry, notably a high-end DAC, to allow it to do so. So this isn’t a smartphone review per se but an audio-centric look at a sophisticated phone as music player.

If you want to carry only one device—but you want it to do everything a state-of-the-art smartphone would do plus everything a state-of-the-art music player would do—is the V20 up to the job? We can answer here at least half of that question. Read on.

By the Numbers